You must first expect it of yourself
We had a backyard pool when I was young. Later I learned it was one of the first in-ground pools in my little town in Pennsylvania, and much later I discovered that backyard pools were considered high living. To me, our pool was just another outlet for my Dad's creative mind and boundless energy. To make the pool, he dug a hole in the backyard with a tractor from his John Deere dealership, lined it with cement blocks, and installed a heating and filter system of his own creation. The 'control room' beneath the cement deck that skirted the pool was like a mad scientist's lab. Pipes and valves and pumps and wires and an archaic and somewhat dangerous looking boiler hissed and gurgled in a dark, damp underground that smelled of chemicals and decay. The plumbing often leaked and the walls took a lot of maintenance, but we had a warm, clear, clean, if somewhat small, pool to play in. To keep the walls sealed up, we'd fill the pool with hay each fall to protect the...